JudgeLynnToler

This was on my mind ...

I lost Nineteen again today. Abandoning himself to that wasteland we offhandedly call ‘the system’, he just walked away – casually – like it was no big deal. Some claim I shouldn’t say I lost him, though, considering what I do. While I am a Black woman, I am also the person appointed to balance the books, which means that on this particular day, I am the one sending Nineteen to jail.

I am a judge in an inner-ring suburb, a place where middle-class stability stands in the shadow of urban distractions. Here, Black, male and Nineteen is required to face the same dilemma every day; “Do I work and wait like momma said, or join the party down the street?” Forced to choose before the calm sets in, Nineteen sometimes picks the wrong one. Next thing you know, he’s standing before me, wondering what all the fuss is about.

It’s important to know that I am a municipal judge. Handling minor matters, I deal with assault, drug possession and carrying a concealed weapon charges. Unfortunately, the size of the cases I see occasionally confuses Nineteen. He views his mistake as a little thing that doesn’t warrant much concern. I, on the other hand, see it as a small down payment on an incredible cultural cost. “What’s with making me look for a job?” he asks. “Why do I have to go back to school in order to stay out of jail?” I’m fighting to keep the boy from becoming a statistic, and he doesn’t even care. So I plead, not for Nineteen to obey the law, but for him to do right by me.

“You owe every Black woman who cares for you an obligation you won’t be able to repay if you’re working off some ill-gotten debt to a society you don’t owe,” I tell him. Some listen. Most don’t. My successes are few; I decide to give up at least once a week. But I keep pressing because I don’t want to leave stranded the few I do manage to help. Those wins notwithstanding, my frustrations remain.

Just yesterday, one asked me to stop bothering him. “You’re not my mother,” he said. “Why are you messing with me? Just let me do my time.” Lots of them, in fact, ask me to leave them alone. They tell me, “It ain’t no thing.” But more often than not, the phrase that I hear is the chilling, “I can jail.”

Of course, I know I only see the problems. Nineteen represents himself well, in large numbers everywhere. I have seven I claim outright, you know – not currently Nineteen – but Black and male. One I married; four came with him, and two my husband and I made together. The older ones have already been Nineteen. They’ve had their troubles, but they’re all okay now. The ones I made myself, however, are still young; they have a lot to learn.

Living well in a world that does not always see your clearly is a difficult thing to do. My boys must be able to ignore those who ridicule their efforts to do well in school while remaining strong even among those who find that strength intimidating. Tough lessons, these, but they must learn them if they are going to do Nineteen the right way. I don’t want them standing before some judge who may see them as a statistic. If they mess around and get before the wrong guy, then where will they be?

Jail, of course, is the answer to that question. The very same place I wound up sending Nineteen today. Frustrated because I can’t fix the world, and Nineteen won’t let me help him live better in it, I shake my head but must move on. I have thirty more cases to hear.

“To jail or not to jail?” that is the question. How hard am I supposed to try without his help? Doesn’t he see how so much of the harm he causes lands right in some sister’s lap? That is why I told Nineteen he owed me. “Consider the sisters in your life,” I say. “It isn’t always about you.” Then I remind him that, whether or not he understands it, when you jail, we do too.

It took me 40 years to learn how to really enjoy people.I am predisposed to panic and am often immersed in irrational worry.When fear drives you like that New is typically a problem. And I mean anything: places, situations, expectations and, for me, people, in particular. They’re the most unpredictable and dangerous kind of New I usually run into. Solitude beckons me every moment of the day.

Happily, I have worked my way out of the depths of that kind of dysfunction. Though by no means a devil may care adventurer, I am now at least a lean-in and get through it, active participant in life. I can now step off my fear and enjoy the depth and breadth of most people that I meet.

So now to Mo.Monique is my fashion guru, a woman 25 years my junior who has it so together, I just watch what she does and try to recreate, in some small way, all of the things she does so well.

Mo is a woman who lights up a room with her positive attitude, while taking no crap – at all. She’ll tolerate a little nonsense but she has defined limits and she can shut down all manner of ridiculousness with a few cool, uncluttered phrases uttered without attitude or anger at all.

Her fashion sense is inimitable so I don’t try with that at all. I just let her guide me slowly as she tries to rock me out of my old, staid, don’t care about clothes attitude one outfit at a time.

Breezy, but incredibly structured, she is a model of efficiency. I could do with two good helpings of both ease and organization, but I haven’t adopted any pieces of those yet because they’re so very far away from who I am. That said, I’m watching her like a hawk, looking for some small thing I can pull off now, then working my way towards the rest over time.

Since meeting her I’ve had many “Mo-ments,” times when I just sit back, appreciate who she is and try to adopt a little of what she’s got going on. I like people who sparkle.I just wanted to let her know.

I got a question from a woman hurt by the fact that her man (of 4 years) left her for another woman and married her within a year. She’s having a hard time coping with the fact that he moved on so quickly and is now so happy.
To Ms. B who wrote that she dated this guy for 4 years. He cheated on her with another woman, who he eventually left her for. They then married. (She also says that she thought he was selfish and a bit of a narcissist) She’s upset that he seems to be happy now and finds it to be a big blow to her confidence. She’s having a hard time with it.
HEAR ME. His being happy with another woman is no reflection on you. It just means they were more compatible than you and he were. That’s it and that’s all. You say you thought he was a narcissist … so clearly he wasn’t your dream companion. Now you have the opportunity to find a man that suits you better. One that is not selfish.
LADIES, quit defining your worth based upon whether or not you have a man. Please stop wondering why some other woman got the guy you wanted as if you lost a battle for the last man on earth and that it means you are not lovable. It means he wasn’t the guy for you long term. Your value is based on your heart, your spirit, your soul, your accomplishments.
I have been left by a number of dudes. After a couple of days and a new pair of shoes or something I kept it moving. I knew my value. I also knew my quirks. Everybody’s not going to like what I bring to the table. Some guys got sick of me and my need to be alone and my fears about going out or whatever nonsense I was dealing with at the time. I believe at least one simply met a woman he liked better. I don’t know for sure because I didn’t inquire.
Next thing you know I was “Involuntarily emancipated” Unintended, to be sure, but free nonetheless. My friends still loved me, my degrees did not fall of the wall and my employer kept paying me. I remember one guy who left me in Law School at the end of the year. After the summer, when we got back to school I hugged his new girlfriend and told her they were a cute couple or something so she wouldn’t feel weird every time she saw me.

I got a new guy over the next summer who dumped me after 6 months. By phone … long distance. He called a year later while I was reading a really good book. I said “Hey, how are you?” He said, “fine,” then started talking about I don’t know what. Five minutes in he realized I wasn’t listening and said, “Well I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” I said, “okay, it was really good hearing from you though.”

I don’t know why they didn’t want me because I never asked why and never let them explain. What difference would it make? They didn’t want me. What was I going to do? Beg? Tell them why they’re wrong? Ask them what’s so wrong with me? Offer to change? Please. They all moved on to new women. Often, I found that I liked the wives of some of my exes more than I like them. But what’s that got to do with me? It freed me up to find Eric. Took almost 30 years but I got the right guy.

On the east side of Columbus, Ohio, just south of James Road, there are three small streets accessible only from Livingston Avenue. Each street has four to eight houses. They are nice homes, larger than the majority of houses in the surrounding area. This, in and of itself, is not remarkable. Who built them, when and why, however, is. Livingston Heights came into being in the early 1940s, when two black men – a small businessman and a physician – bought land on the outskirts of Columbus in what were then little more than cow pastures. They developed this plot by selling individual parcels to other black professionals they knew.

Unwelcome elsewhere, the twenty or so families who settled there took land that was of no interest to others and built themselves a community. They held regular meetings to discuss issues of common interest: the building of roads, the construction of sewers. They presented a united front to the City of Columbus and managed to successfully integrate the area into its surroundings as the city grew out to meet it.

They named their community Livingston Heights.

I was born into that oasis in 1959. And every July, or as long as I can remember, all of the families in Livingston Heights got together for the annual picnic. We all congregated in someone’s backyard to eat, talk and enjoy one another’s company. The children in the neighborhood would put on a show for the adults. We were a spunky, if not a particularly talented, group of kids. We got rave reviews every year.

The women planned and cooked and made costumes for our show. They talked about cleaning ladies and colleges. The men made boasts about barbecue sauce and disagreed on how to light the fire.

They also spoke more quietly among themselves about the things they were trying to change for the children they watched play in the streets they had created. We kids played kickball undisturbed in the street, since all three were dead ends, and anyone who would ordinarily travel them was already accounted for in someone’s backyard.

The picnic would last well into the night. We kids all got to stay up late, since it was summertime. Toward dusk, as Johnny Walker and Jim Beam made their presence better known, the jokes began to roll, and the Richard Pryor albums came out. Our parents left us kids on our own to carry on as we pleased, content in the knowledge that we were firmly ensconced in our a safe haven conceived and built by black men and women who were told they couldn’t live like that.

As time went by and my world grew beyond the confines of those three small streets, I began to comprehend with greater clarity the significance of was happening there.

I now know that what I took for granted as nothing more than a rollicking good time on a warm summer afternoon, was more accurately a celebration of achievement and vision, the memory of which I will always cherish, along with the men and women who made it so.

More from JudgeLynn

Books

My Mother's Rules" is a humorous, easy to follow self-help guide to managing your emotional life.

Using lessons learned on the bench along with humorous anecdotes from her own 30 year marriage, Judge Lynn Toler wrote "Making Marriage Work" as a logical and simple guide to bringing back the practicality lost in relationships over the years.

About

Judge Lynn Toler became the host of the longest running television court program, "Divorce Court" in 2006. Prior to that, Judge Lynn Toler graduated from Harvard University and The University of Pennsylvania Law School. She began practicing law in Cleveland in 1984. In 1993, at the age of 33, she was elected judge of The Cleveland Heights Municipal Court. Judge Toler volunteered actively in her community creating innovative programs for young offenders such as Woman Talk, a program designed to intensively mentor young, at-risk girls.

Toler also headed the Cleveland Heights Coordinated Community Response to Violence against Women, a countywide initiative for the coordination of community resources to assist women who are victims of violence. She was also active as an advisory board member for Templum House, a battered women's shelter. As a result of her work in the area of domestic violence in 2002, she was awarded The Humanitarian of the Year Award from The Cleveland Domestic Violence Center.

Judge Toler's dedication to ending domestic violence continues. Currently, she is on the Board of GoPurple.org, a non-profit organization that addresses the issue of domestic violence through education. GoPurple.Org sends educators into classrooms teaching students about healthy relationships, signs of potentially abusive relationships, and ways to help both themselves and others who are in abusive situations.

Judge Toler has served as an adjunct professor at Ursuline College, where she created and taught courses on Civil Rights Law, and Women and the Law. She was also a frequent instructor for the Ohio Judicial College, where she helped create and taught continuing judicial education course for other judges.

Judge Toler is the author of three books including her most recent "Making Marriage Work: New Rules for an Old Institution." Her first, "My Mother's Rules: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Emotional Genius" published in 2006, is a humorous memoir in which Judge Lynn recounts a childhood lived in the shadow of mental illness and provides a practical guide to the emotional lessons learned from that experience. And her time on the bench. Her second book, "Put It In Writing," coauthored with Deborah Hutchison, was published in September, 2009. It gives readers concrete, conflict-free solutions to the difficult situations that arise between family and friends.

Judge Toler has written for a variety of magazines including Divorce Magazine published through out the United States and Canada. In 2009, Judge Toler was given The Voice of Freedom Award by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joining former honorees Colin Powell and Vice President Al Gore, in ringing the Liberty Bell on Martin Luther King Day.

Currently, Judge Toler appears regularly as a guest expert on WeTV's Marriage Bootcamp. Born on October 25, 1959, she has been married to Eric Mumford since April, 1989. She has two sons and four stepsons.

Connect with Judge Lynn

LOSING NINETEEN BY JUDGE LYNN C. TOLER I lost Nineteen again today. Abandoning himself to that wasteland we offhandedly call ‘the system’, he just walked away – casually – like it was no big deal. Some claim I shouldn’t say I lost him, though, considering what I do. While I am a Black woman, I […]

It took me 40 years to learn how to really enjoy people. I am predisposed to panic and am often immersed in irrational worry. When fear drives you like that New is typically a problem. And I mean anything: places, situations, expectations and, for me, people, in particular. They’re the most unpredictable and dangerous kind […]

I got a question from a woman hurt by the fact that her man (of 4 years) left her for another woman and married her within a year. She’s having a hard time coping with the fact that he moved on so quickly and is now so happy. To Ms. B who wrote that she […]

Paradise Remembered On the east side of Columbus, Ohio, just south of James Road, there are three small streets accessible only from Livingston Avenue. Each street has four to eight houses. They are nice homes, larger than the majority of houses in the surrounding area. This, in and of itself, is not remarkable. Who […]